Seagate Continues Bet on Hybrid HDDs With Flash Cache
Seagate said that it has shipped one million Momentus XT solid state hybrid hard drives for laptop PCs since spring 2010.
The company indicated that it will be following this path in the foreseeable time as a strategy to leverage fast flash memory in mass storage media while maintaining the low cost level of hard drive technology.
Seagate said that its XT drives have been shipping to Alienware, Asus, Dell, Sony and Toshiba. The 7200 RPM models integrate 4 GB of flash memory and are available with capacities of up to 500 GB. They promise up to 50 percent faster boot ups than traditional 5400 RPM drives.
Seagate stated that high-performance SSDs are still not an alternative for hard drives in mainstream mass storage as "they cost as much as 10 times more than hard disk drives of the same capacity, with the price of a 250 GB SSD outstripping even the cost of many laptop PCs." According to the manufacturer, consumers are not willing to pay or simply cannot afford the higher price of the SSD. Of course, Seagate has a significant interest in the hard drive keeping its price/capacity advantage over flash as the hard drive and the technology enabling it is the company's bread and butter.
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They do have a point, but the gap between the regular 7,200rpm HDD and the Momentus XT isn't as big as they seem to imply.
With the price of SSDs going down it's hard to see a long term future for the hybrid drives. The price/performance temporary patches don't seem to have a very good track record to me.
I have a Momentus XT and it's so good I would never consider a non-SSD or SSD-cached hard disk solution for a laptop or desktop again.